The Dust Has Just Begun to Fall
by Opaul
Summary: Drabble fiction, eclare, sequel to Tiny Glass Houses. The story surrounding Julia's death and Eli's insanity.


**Hello everyone, this is technically a sequel to a drabble series I wrote awhile back called Tiny Glass Houses I recommend reading that first, its on my profile. This is a set of drabbles revolving greatly around the insanity of Eli, Eclare and the other people in Eli's life. The title "The dust had just begun to fall" comes from the song Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap which carries the central theme of the story. ****If you have any questions feel free to ask!**

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><p><strong>Forms<strong>

Julia the angel, Julia the ghost, Julia the memory, Julia the forgotten, Julia the pregnant, Julia the five letter word, Julia the beautiful, Julia the dead ex-girlfriend, Julia the dark abyss, Julia the demon. But it had been seldom a long time since Julia had been an actual living person in Eli's life.

Julia had become a concept, a nonliving entity, following him around as he made his way in the world, haunting him like a ghost, energy, dark matter, not truly real; a hypothetical substance. That no matter how far he traveled would never leave him.

**Supernovas**

Even they collapse. Larger than life, stars of unthinkable size in the realm of the human mind. Nothing could possibly be that big. Yet even they are but a blimp in the scheme of the universe.

All the light, matter, planets, possible lives, gases, hydrogen sucked up in their path after their death goes unnoticed by the rest of the universe. The rest of goes on spinning, from calm into chaos and back again. Julia's death did not stop the turning of the Earth. But it floored Eli, created a black hole in his life. Because the fundamental truth was that when he said "_this is where I killed my girlfriend_" he was not exaggerating.

**Fire**

Fire is energy, fire is life, fire is passion, lust. Fire is warmth, fire is heat, fire is destruction, fire is war. It explodes in multitudes of colors that are indescribable and tingle the senses . Fire is light, fire is the color the hope, the freedom, the love….. And love is strong. Love is said to be the strongest thing in the universe.

To that many a wise man laughs. Love is fragile, save a tiny waft of flame you hold in your hand. The people creating the flame can be the most forceful, tenacious of people, but fire still needs kindle to burn. Blood runs cold, and cuts trudge deep and it all goes up in smoke. Lost to us all at the light goes out from our eyes. Fire needs energy to burning, hydrogen is flammable, and hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Plenty to burn to forever, stars are made of fire after all and they burn for eons. Plenty of light to illuminate the night sky. What happens when you throw a waft of flame into a black hole? Julia ponders from her seat in the sand as the sun dove down over the horizon.

It becomes crushed.

Julia had never thought of that. She always assumed that fire was the life inside of us, the one that kept us alive was thrown into the infinite of darkness it would simply eat it all away.

**Empty**

No one can fill up the holes inside of you.

_"Here's what I want Clare, I need you not to give up on me cause you're the only thing that makes me feel like I could ever get better."_

_"You RIPPED MY HEART OUT."_

_"That's not what I meant to do."_

_"We're growing apart."_

_"I love YOU Clare, and I know you love me."_

_"We're not meant to be together."_

Then what do you fill them with?

**Shadow**

No one could understand it. It did not begin with her death, nor Clare's ending it with him, maybe it was his mother taking him to raves not play dates, but that was doubtful. Insanity was a disease that followed him. Consumed him, drowned him. Every time he managed to keep his head above water some unseen current dragged him under. Into the ocean whose depths know no bounds. It stole him away, stole his heart away, into a dark tangled desperate place. When did he become like this, when did all the strings break? He pondered staring up at the ceiling of the hospital bed.

Perhaps when something is fundamental broken there is not a bandage large enough in the world to fix it. He should his head, tears like a chemical burn trailing down his face. But it was fixed, it was okay for a while. Then it all went out.

The light that once danced on the ocean slipped back beneath the horizon. The angels would play with fireworks while the demons slept in the darkness.

**Stuff**

"But what if I forget her?"

"Oh Eli, that stuff in your room that's not Julia. Julia's in here," the woman said touching her own heart.

Julia smiled demonically from the back seat. _That stuff was Julia_; just not the part that should have been kept.

Eli stared into the rain covered windshield as he leaned forward on the steering will but the only thing he could see was his on reflection.

**Monster**

This monster was Julia. This monster was Clare. This monster was his mother and his father. It was the sun the hung in the morning and ruled the nightly sky. This monster was the world. This monster had green eyes and dark hair. It stared at back at him in the mirror and sung him to sleep at night. It kissed his lips and made him bleed. It made him cry and made him laugh like there was no tomorrow. It made him calculating; it made him deranged.

He saw it in the rain and in the sunshine. This monster followed him like a shadow and walked ahead of him like an old friend.

"_Are you saying I'm some sort of heartless monster?"_

"_Sometimes." _

Yes, sometimes Eli became the heartless monster that had followed him all his life.

How do you fight the monster inside yourself?

**Ruin**

"THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT. You ruined my life," he roared into the picture frame.

Julia the ghost snickered running a finger along his cheek, placing her face next to his.

"But you stole mine."

**Shattered**

Julia's nimble bare feet stepped carefully among the pieces of the windshield and the crushed remains of the rear-view mirror. Flecks of blood were sprinkled them in the multicolored flashing lights. She sighed staring on at the remnants of the crash.

Something far more important had been shattered here. Something she could not fix. Nor might even be able to fix.

**Alone**

Julia could not contain the rage that filled her at the moment as she followed behind the girl who was frantically running out of the hospital.

"YOU LEFT HIM ALONE. HOW COULD YOU?" She screamed at the open air. Of course Clare couldn't hear her as she entered the street and took her shoes off. Tears streamed down her face. "YOU BROKE UP WITH HIM BECAUSE HE WAS SCARING YOU AND THEN YOU JUST DON'T TELL ANYONE, NOT HIS MOM, NOT HIS DAD OR A COUNSELOR THAT HE'S GOING FUCKING INSANE."

Julia's throat burned from shouting so loud. And she could feel her nonexistent blood rushing to her face. "HE COULD HAVE DIED ARE YOU STUPID YOU JUST DON'T LEAVE THE MENTALLY INSANE TO FEND FOR THEMSELVES."

She paused watching the girl amble slowly down the streets. Her shoes in one hand and the truly terrified and broken face as she walked slowly in and out of the street lights.

Julia crumbled. She hugged her knees and cried giant inconsolable sobs into the night. She pressed her face into her white dress. She knew she couldn't blame the girl for cracking under the pressure. She was normal and just trying to live a normal life. Julia had only meant well, just for the best.

She'd picked her out like she had hoping she could be a positive force in his life. And she was. For a while.

But some things are greater than one person can handle.

Julia sniffled. _Love could not conquer anything, it was far too fragile. _

**Symptoms **

"OCD definitely, most likely post-traumatic stress syndrome as well, and probably bipolar disorder," the doctor said flipping through the clip board. Cece's heart sank like a weight and her head spun like she'd taken acid and hopped on a tilt-o-whirl.

"_I guess we let you get a little lost…" _

She desperately needed to sit down. She struggled into the chair in the hallway outside her son's hospital room door.

"Honestly Mrs. Goldsworthy, didn't you notice any of this stuff happening?"

"I should have," she breathed as tears clouded her vision completely.

Somehow she had managed to lose her only child.

**Julia**

"My name is Julia," the ghost whispered to the darkness surrounding him. "And I am haunting you."

**Which**

"_And Eli loves me." _

"_Eli doesn't love anyone." _

Julia the angel shook her head. All lies were said to hold an element of truth while some lies couldn't be further from the truth. She sat down on the front stoop sighing.

The boy daunted her even in the many phases of her death. The truth was that Eli could love, but the monster inside of him could not. But it couldn't all be blamed on that, for it was not a separate entity that had jumped inside his head one sunny afternoon and started poking fun at him, but that it was a park of him that had always been there lurking in the back of his mind for the entirety of his existence.

So the question was which was the real Eli, in truth, they both were. Julia put her face in her hands and for a desperate moment wished she was still alive to feel the rain.

**Stalker Angel**

The demon smiled wickedly looking on as Eli grappled with the pen battling slowly his own insanity. The boy wrote furiously in sketchy chicken scratch letters.

_Stalker Angel._ Well there were certainly worse names to have.

HThe

**Manipulation**

"_HE'S MANIPULATING YOU."_

"_You ARE MANIPULATING ME."_

"…..You know, I don't think Eli was trying to manipulate anyone," Fiona said sitting down next to Alli on the picnic table. "Eli is just mentally ill―

"That is exactly what I'm saying," Alli retorted flatly.

"No manipulation is conscious, and Eli isn't conscious,"Fiona paused, "when you're going crazy it's like this whole other body takes over you and makes you say and do things you don't mean," she said pleadingly.

"That's still not an excuse," Alli replied hotly picking up her purse and getting up.

Fiona pressed her lips together. It wasn't supposed to be.

**Lids**

His eye lids were heavy, swollen. A sign of fatigue, insomnia. A symptom of everything from psychotic depression to hypomania. Julia's lips pulled into a tight frown; did no one in his new life ever notice this?

**Hollow**

A supernova is a giant chasm made in space, sucking up everything it comes in contact with. Planets, stars, charm bracelets, light, gases, people. When a great mass like a star dies they are created out of the void. Julia kicks the edge of a pile of books. It doesn't react. She holds her elbows and looks at Eli's room. To think she used to be able to dance in here. Her eyes travel over to the center of this black hole, sitting on his bed twirling a pen around in his hands. She sighs.

A swirling, spiraling horrible vortex collecting meaningless objects in attempt to compensate for the vital ones. To stop a vacuum of this magnitude would require a massive amount of force. She breathes in and out slowly as she approaches the one who used to be her trembling love. There would be no bearing or simply disappearing after seeing this. She may be on the path to the great beyond but no way was she leaving him to disappear into the void that had become his own heart. Of alone, into the dark.

Julia moves to brush a length of hair out of his face. "You said you would never leave me," he murmurs. She stops short, eyes wide, unable to move.

**Death**

It had taken the one person he had ever loved more than anything. It also represented the only escape that had ever permanently presented itself. It also kept people away far enough to never meet the darker sides of him. Perhaps that's why he was so obsessed with it.

The things he wanted most laid in death. Love and freedom.

It was almost a miracle he hadn't called into it comforting confines yet.

**Fear**

Clare eyed Fiona curiously out of the corner of her eyes as she came to sit next to her on the curb. Clare's mother was late picking her up. "Hey," Fiona spoke in a jovial but slightly awkward voice.

"Hi Fiona," Clare replied eying her strangely. She and Fiona weren't exactly friends. Fiona took over backpack and shifted her body toward her. She clearly intended this to be a long conversation. Clare closed the book in her hands and sat up straighter. "What is it?"

Fiona breathed in and out steading herself. "I was hoping I could talk to you about Eli…"

Clare shook her head, opening her book again. "I don't want anything to do with him. Eli scares me."

"Eli scares himself."

Fiona look away from Clare off to where Eli was sitting on the front stoop of the school talking to Adam.

"Do you still love him?" She asked out of the blue.

Clare gripped the book as tightly as possible to keep from shaking.

**Universe**

Chaos is the very nature of the universe.

All other things, life, the planets, stars, every single molecule form the opposite. All things are created out of chaos conquered. They come together by chance and form amazing and beautiful things. Simple and perfect chance, like the turning over of a tarot card, or getting the bullet in Russian roulette.

And in this storyline it is the destiny of all things that came together to fall apart. No matter how beautiful or wonderful; no matter how desperately you wish to hold on to it.

For that is the nature of the universe.

All things that come together will collapse.

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**Please review!**


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